Sunday, February 1, 2009

Welcome to the Language Design Workshop!

If you would like to participate in this workshop (for free, of course!), please submit answers to the following questions in my comments area by 5pm PST on February 8th:

1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Please describe.1b. If spoken by aliens, what kind of aliens? Please describe.

2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.

3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world? 3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?

4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?4a. Does your story use names? If yes, give examples.4b. Does your story use object labels? If yes, give examples.4c. Does your story use extended sequences of created language material (dialogue, songs, poetry etc.)? If yes, give examples.4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.

5. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?

Please answer all these questions to the best of your ability. If you can't answer every single one in detail, don't worry. I'm not looking for people who have already got perfectly designed languages here, but people to whom I can be of help. That said, please provide the best and most complete answers you can, because I'll need a good sense of the language you're aiming for in order to help you flesh it out. I urge you to read through my "How linguistics can help you!" posts from the past month. This should help you get some ideas.

Since I'm not sure what kind of answers I'll get, or how many people will submit, I'm being cautious about numbers, but I'm hoping to have five to ten participants.

9 comments:

1. I have two possible projects that could be used for this workshop. In one, the language is spoken by beings that look human but which, of course, cannot interbreed with Homo Sapiens. Since they live on a planet far from Earth, they probably qualify as aliens. However, their speech apperatis is indistinquishable from that of Homo Sapiens. The other possible species is definitely alien. They look very much like large, fuzzy, variously colored Teddy bears with, er, antennae on their foreheads. Their language is, shall we say, not easy for the human settlers to master, since it seems to consist mostly of strings of consonants.

1.A. The Nova Britannians live on a planet, pretty much all over the landmasses of the planet. Some, for instence, live in the tropics, some live in the borial region, some in subtropicaal regions, etc. However, all indigenes speak one language, doubtless with regional variation that I haven't yet had occasion to document. All also speak British, a language descended from English and for the purposes of the narrative indistinguishable from the English in which the story is written.

1.B. See above.

2. *shrug* What's to describe? They're people. They interact. As far as I can tell, there is a fairly wide range of economic divercity, but fairly limited class distinctions and tension. Also, the society is pretty well integrated both with respect to indigenes and with respect to Plague Children (the cohort of disabled).

3. Not sure, but I think I answered that in 2.

3.A. Not too many imediately obvious language differences among groups that I know of. One thing is that, while all indigenes speak both the indigenous language and British, many or most Settlers (Homo Sapiens from Earth) speak only British.

3.B. Though I only have one instence to go on, apparently Settlers who speak the indigenous language fluently are very highly thought of by indigenes.

BTW not sure this is relevant, but Nova Britannia is part of a larger system, the Nova Europa system, where other Earth-based languages are spoken. At one point a young viewpoint character, whose own French and Italian leave a lot to be desired, lowers his opinion of an adult who cannot speak or understand either language either. Interestingly, this same viewpoint character is fluent in the indigenous language.

4. The languages in both project cases don't at the moment penetrate the stories much at all. More so in the case of Nova Britannia, where at least we have placenames. Not much at all in the case of Strlinkmrlad, for perhaps obvious reasons. The planet is Strlinkmrlad, the indigenous intelligent species, Strlinkmr.

4.A. We have placenames. It seems that people have adopted British or Briticized names, e.g. Ringo Treeplanter. But there are plenty of placenames. Raklebad, Falibanna, Roban Island.

I'm not really interested in the workshop. Most of what you discuss is already familiar to me. I think I'm probably better off to just keep reading in anthropology and linguistics when I can. Still, I'm always looking for new insights into language and culture and I'm not completely sure what you mean by the above statement.

By labeling, are you talking about the way different languagues structure the world? For example, one language might have birds and bats and rocketships all under the same umbrella as things that fly, using the infix "-kom-" to indicate this similarity. Therefore in this language you get words like "dikomtik" for hawk, seskompov for bat and gatkomjut for rocketship. Or are you talking about something else?

Thanks for the question, Byron. By object labels I just mean are you naming things, like animals or objects or non-proper nouns, in the language in question. It's very common, so I wouldn't be surprised if most participants were using these. We'll get into further subtleties later if the case warrants!

Juliette, ideally, indigenous flora and fauna, as well as features like rivers, would have indigenous names. My world is not yet fully enough developed for this to have kicked in, though as stated I do have placenames. I think it's a matter of realization and development.

1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?Humans1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Badlands/desert

2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.The rsakk are a violent and proud sub-species of human/lizard shapeshifters. They breathe fire but do not fly. They live as extended families, communally raising children until maturity (14) when the children develop the ability to shapeshift and move out to their own lives. Their homes are domed adobe or stone buildings with a large central firepit around which daily life revolves. Their technology level is neolithic and the written word is restricted to elite priests. Cultural history is recorded in intricate weavings. Merchants record simple information with beads and knotted strings.

3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?The rsakk are one of several races of "human". Others shift into other forms. All can interbreed. Rsakk clans often compete, but the lowest rsakk is considered superior to the highest non-rsakk. Males and females are heavily segregated, with men taking more than one wife and sheltering them in the clan compound.

3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?Rsakki is spoken by rsakk and those who live close to them. Other regions where the population predominantly have another shape speak their own language. Trading is done in other languages at times, but religious rituals, home life, and military operations all are held in rsakki.3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?Rsakki is a romantic language and considered prouder and more poetic than other languages.

4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?Language is a reflection of culture, so I want it to give clues into the otherness of rsakk culture. Fire is central to rsakk society, and they have about as many words for it as the Inuit have for snow. Because children are raised communally by nurses, the words for brother, mother etc. have different meanings than on Earth.

1. The language is spoken by aliens, but humans should be able to master the basics.1a. The only humans in the star system have recently arrived aboard one of the first starships. Climate is adjustable, in the sealed environment aboard ship.1b. The aliens are my marine species, the arcati. Basic body shape is that of a mermaid.

2. Arcati society and technology has fragmented since the seas rose up and swallowed the land. Arcati cities are grown from a genetically-engineered coral-analog. Each reef is an independent city-state. There are guilds that oversee the training of young arcati in their specialised occupations. There is also an aristocracy of sorts - the leadership of each reef’s guild is hereditary. Thus the Watchers Guild is ruled by the Lord of Astrophysics, even though he has no interest anything but the privileges his position brings him.

When an arcati child hits puberty, they are given one night of freedom from all authority, so that they can choose a guild without any pressure from those who feel that they know better. The guild that they choose is required to take them on, but on a probationary status only. They have one year to prove themselves. Should they fail, they must seek out another guild willing to take on a failure.

3. There are hierarchies in both human and alien groups. The humans have a command structure aboard their ship. They are further divided by specialisation in scientific disciplines.

The arcati have their various guilds, which have command structures based upon skills, knowledge and length of service to the guild. All of which is subverted at the top by the hereditary lordship.

3a. There will, of course, be some jargon based upon scientific/guild specialisations. I am also toying with the idea of an arcati “formal language”, which would normally be used by unworthy apprentices to show respect to honoured guildmasters. The formal language is very difficult (exactly how, I haven‘t decided, but I want it to be so hard that any arcati has to really think before they speak, or it all comes out horribly embarrassingly wrong). When Talioth‘s mother catches her stargazing daughter, she speaks to Talioth in the formal language - for the same reason an angry human might count up to ten before speaking.

3b. The arcati will always introduce themselves by name and rank and guild. This allows other arcati to immediately place them within the hierarchy of the reef, and decide whether or not the meeting requires respectful formal language from either party.

Respectful informal language is also possible, but it is normally reserved for family, or for interactions between those of equal or near-equal rank.

4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?4a. Some characters (Talioth) and places (Nirael Reef) do use names. Others, such as the arcati god of death (the Eater Of All Life), and the ancient ruin of a flooded land-based city (the Reef Of The Dead), just use a basic description in English as the “name”. Same with most of the predators and prey - bloodray, weedlurker, snaptrap shell, sandlurker, bubblefish, spinedrift.4b. Not yet. 4c. Not yet. I’m thinking maybe some of the fragments of their history survive as epic poems, but I certainly haven’t written any. 4d. Much of the story is told from Talioth’s POV. Currently, there is a cunning plan to have her speak exactly one sentence of her created-language to the humans. 5. The arcati modify their language with discharges of pheromones that add emphasis. It takes them some time to realise that humans can’t do the same. Cue misunderstandings.

The academic discussion makes my head spin!my turn...1. Is your language spoken by humans or by aliens?Humans1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Please describe.A desert that in the end becomes a tropical jungle

1b. If spoken by aliens, what kind of aliens? Please describe.Humanoids all.

2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.They are a world of djinn – meaning they can do what djinn do. Those powers come with a cost, called uza which they describe as life energy. Run out of uza and you die. Have enough and you can alter matter – in fact if you had enough (no one on ua does), you could “create” matter.Ua is a society of non-violent people. Individuals who commit violence are considered to be darkless – the dark is where the Ua are said to have originated, essentially the womb of the great mother Uzazya. Most homes in Ua have a dark built in the center. The dark is used for meditation and healing. Relationships are polygamous with families forming around a task such as farming, or an occupation such as teaching. Families live together in houses which resemble dorms, with individuals having rooms and a central location for the dark and for dining.The political system is infused with what is called "protocol" which would fill pages and pages with how one is supposed to behave and interact. There are rules for greeting and eating and almost everything. The rules are kept most often by the royal families, whose "rulebooks" are even longer. Basically you are supposed to be polite to everyone and acknowledge their heritage. After that you can drop protocol unless you are a minor leader trying to advance, in which case you are supposed to try to impress the higher leaders by your knowledge of their heritage and by your proper treatment of them.People greet each other with a prescribed greeting in which one person tells the other that their uza is beautiful, the other says, may your uza increase, and the first person says our uza will be beautiful together (awa uza, gezwa uza, eiwa uza).At the beginning of the book there is a severe drought which has caused any number of problems including small wars. The people are looking to their leaders for solutions, as no one has enough uza to make the water return.i could say a lot more about the social interaction but this is getting long. i haven't talked about uza fights, uza games and teaching songs, education, coming of age (14 summers), and the fact that these folks encourage gender experimentation, which means changing back and forth until you find one you like. some decide not to settle, but most folks do. and last but not least, how men and women interact, but see below for that.

3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?There are three ruling families headed by Raba (think queens) – women who have been bred to have extremely high levels of uza. They also each have a sagama – a staff of leadership which also acts as a collection device for uza offered to them by their people. Each family rules an area in Ua, and the families are ruled by the Rabu – essentially the King. The King gains his position by heritage. It has evolved that the Raba send sons to the king and one is chosen as his heir. In the past the Raba were consorts of the Rabu and provided heirs directly. Each family has developed a different culture: The Az are preoccupied with the senses and often referred to as the house of color and sound. The Uz are preoccupied with the spiritual, and the newest house, the house of Ua, claims to be occupied with the elements and their capacities in nature and in humans. By the end of the story, the political picture changes a great deal.Other divisions: the royal families have people with the highest uza. Women have more uza than men (in general). There is a class of men who “volunteer” to do “Kifu.” They are imprisoned in boxes made of a special kind of wood and bound with spells that only a Raba can produce. It happens that only men do Kifu because their uza is poor and that is one way of increasing it. If a male is born with high uza there is pressure put on him to choose female gender so he can become a Raba candidate. Males are considered less useful because of their lower uza, so there is some tension associated with being a male in the royal family - many are considered useless except for their sperm.

Finally, I based the cultures of the three families quite loosely on three of my favorite cultures: African, Native American, and Japanese. You might be able to guess which is which from what i have said already.

3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?There aren't many language differences between the various groups - mainly pronunciation and dialect.

3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?none

4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.The best answer is sort of - there is a characters who has trouble communicating when he is off Ua, but that's because he's only 4. The real problems in communicating come when people on Ua assume they can read your mind without your permission, because it is a way of greeting on Ua. Some people can detect this intrusion and are offended by it.

5. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?See above. Otherwise, I am not sure. The main reason for the language is to highlight the difference from Dirt (Earth) but also to highlight some similarities. It developed as i developed the culture.

sigh. as usual when i talk too much, i left something out. why would anyone do Kifu, you ask? Because it increases your uza. What good is a Kifu? Think genie in a lamp - men in Kifu have their uza increased a hundredfold (this wears off a little when they get out), and often they are just used by the Raba for things like community development. Alas, even having a lot of Kifu has not been enough to resolve the water crisis. Knowing this has made for some rebellion against being made to do Kifu, particularly for one Raba who even the public think has too many...enter the tension of the story as she chases her sons across the omniverse in an effort to reclaim them and force them into the Kifu. She can do it too, because she is one of the most powerful Raba in the history of Ua (and the only woman to have been in a Kifu). All she wants is to get enough uza to restore water to Ua....needless to say there are lots and lots of tensions that hide behind protocol and behind what is called shielding - telepathic techniques to keep others from reading your mind.

I rethought the created language point of view characters question and I think there are others in the book if you count telepathy as a created language. I do because the rules on Ua are a little different - think protocol - for interacting telepathically.

My ‘aliens’ are humanoid. I have 4 different species/races of humanoids including humans from earth (These races share a genetic origin, but have developed independently until recent history). I have a number of related languages at play.

1a. If spoken by humans, in what climate do these humans live? Please describe.

My humans, by and large, live in a distant (mostly) scientific outpost on Eya, where they are known as Terrans. They all speak whatever the dominant language of Earth’s space program in the future. Since it’s what I’m writing in, I’ve been acting as if that’s just English.

1b. If spoken by aliens, what kind of aliens? Please describe.

Physiologically, my aliens are human. The Dalkan race is by and large empathic and is primarily driven by ‘the tyranny of the majority.’ Eyans are really a subset of Dalkans with a certain mutation. This mutation has two effects. First they are generally albino (although there is some range in light eye color). And secondly, they are projempathic and broadcast their emotions to others.

2. How do your people (humans or aliens) live? Please describe as much as you can about their social interaction.

Eya is a colony where the Dalkans have placed the mutants to separate them from greater society. Within this colony, the Eyans are self-governing and mostly left alone by the Dalkans. The Dalkans have allowed the Terrans to build and maintain a small scientific outpost because in their thinking, they are willing to indulge the Terrans’ curiosity about the Eyans. There are fairly rigid social norms in Dalkan society to begin with to try and compensate for the greater emotional effect individuals can have on each other, but these are more extreme within Eyan society, where the issues are greater, and they are trying to prove they can self-regulate. In both Dalkan and Eyan society reproduction requires medical intervention, but whereas say 90% of Dalkan petitions are approved, procreation is entirely controlled by the state on Eya.

3. What divisions are there between groups of people (aliens or humans or both) in your world?

There are the three basic humanoid races I’ve talked about above. Within Eyan society there is stratification based on visual acuity/eye color and ability to control affective projection.

3a. What kind of language differences are there between these groups?

Dalkans have a high language that they use for formal situations, and an everyday conversational language. In my story the high language is primarily used in diplomatic conversations and should be very status conscious.

Eyans speak a variation on the Dalkan low language that has evolved separately over the last 600 years or so. Eyan and Low Dalkan can be mostly mutually understood, and are not so very different, but culturally they are treated as different languages.

Eyans generally learn High Dalkan as an academic subject.

The humans on Eya speak a common language, which I’ve been treating as English. I’ve assumed that there would be humans who spoke other native languages, as other cultures are part of that landscape, but I don’t have any significant characters for whom this is the case. Understandably, many of the humans in space service have been taught High Dalkan, and have different levels of second language facility.

3b. What kind of value judgments are placed on these language differences?

Within Eyan society, the Dalkans are considered oppressors, and High Dalkan is taught, primarily as a written language, to understand decrees or documents from their shared history. Maybe some art. Very few Eyans have any transmitted contact, let alone direct, with any Dalkans. Those who have contact are people high in Eyan society, but it is difficult for me to imagine that Eyans would seek Dalkan fluency as a sign of status, or use it other than when required. I might need to do some research about language in forced colonization to look at examples of how this plays out.

The Eyans initially treated the Terrans with suspicion, but there has been a careful movement among some elements of society toward embracing a partnership with the Terrans, in order to get out from under Dalkan influence. This is equally resisted by the more conservative elements of society. So I would think there would be increased interest in learning Terran among some some circles.

Dalkans have very limited communication with Eyans, and that is done in High Dalkan. Like I said, Eyan should be understandable to them, though there wouldn’t be much cause for it.

Dalka has a trade interest in maintaining good relations with the Terran system. As empaths, they do much better at in person conversation, and apparently pick up language pretty quickly in person, able to fill in a lot of cues psychically that they may not understand just through language. Many of the Terrans involved in space travel speak passable High Dalkan. (As essentially equals).

There are Dalkans who have settled in the Terran system as well, (but speak Terran there). The Terrans stationed on Eya try to learn that language as well, and have found that although the Eyans do not have the psychic facility with language that the Dalkans have, the fact that they project their emotions often helps the Terrans pick up the general idea when language fails them.

4. How deeply does your language penetrate your story?

4a. Does your story use names? If yes, give examples.

My names are unwieldy. ‘Given names’ are pretty simple- Maeve, Luson, Kei, but they have clunky ‘sir names’. Dalkans have two part sir names including both paternal and maternal lines. Because Eyan reproduction is controlled by the state (in the interest of building a stable genetic pool from a small population that is prone to mutation) and the likelihood that one’s parents are not genetically related, they include information about biological parents (sire and dam) and the parents who raise you (father and mother.) Because these names are unwieldy, they are typically shortened in expected ways, depending on gender and whether or not you were raised by your biological parents.

Examples:Kei ZhuZho-ZhaZhi: (female) Kei’s last name would generally be conversationally “ZhaZhi”, or even “Zha”, but because of a Terran misunderstanding of how Eyan name shortening rules are applied differentially for men and women, the Terrans dubbed her ‘Kei Zhu,’ which has stuck, and is somewhat derogatory.

Luson Roew-Thare: male, Luson Roew, the short name is a sign of status

Do you mean made up words for made up things? The Corpa are a secret police force that mostly deal with psychic crimes. Projempaths or Projems are people who project their emotions, so that others feel them. A pseudopath is a person who can project feelings they don’t actually feel. The executive branch of the government is the Presidium, and is made up of three Presidi. A Vatern is a sort of ‘god parent’ type figure who helps Eyan adolescents and young adults make good sexual decisions. The Ysteri are a secret Eyan brotherhood that try to develop psychic potential.

4c. Does your story use extended sequences of created language material (dialogue, songs, poetry etc.)? If yes, give examples.

Not in any language other than English, lol. My POV characters translate without comment when they’re facile in the language and talk about the text when they’re not, but never do I make any attempt to reproduce the original.

4d. Do you have any created-language point of view characters? Please describe.

In short, most of my POV characters in fact speak a created language. At length . . .

Kei: is in the unique situation of being essentially a native speaker of both Eyan and ‘Terran.’ She is conversant in High Dalkan, but because she learned it from Terrans rather than Eyans, her ‘dialect’ can be seen as inappropriate if she’s not careful- both that she may appear to be representing herself as a Terran (big no no), and that she’s not taking the subjugated form appropriate for an Eyan addressing a Dalkan. She will tend to speak as an equal.

Luson: Native Eyan speaker, Comfortable in High Dalkan (Eyan ‘dialect’), passing Terran that he is actively working on.

Irriam: Native Terran speaker. Culturally Dalkan, and academically conversant.Apologies if I have used any terms of art in an inaccurate way; That’s my best effort at describing the meaningful difference in skill with the various languages.

4. Do you expect language issues to influence the story's plot? If so, how?

Language misunderstanding becomes a major issue that the plot turns on- the terms that are accepted as translation don’t carrying the same actual meaning, although the connotations are socially equivalent.